WordPress Theme – Gridblog

Published On June 8, 2008
83 Comments Leave a Comment

For the past few weeks, I have been experimenting with different grid-based CSS frameworks available on the Internet. YAML and Blueprint are two of the CSS frameworks that I might be using for my future theme development work. These nifty frameworks can be used for rapid development of clean CSS/XHTML layouts. I am not sure if any theme designers are already using these, but I like them a lot because they can save you a lot of time.

Based on the Blueprint framework, I am releasing a minimalistic WordPress theme called the “Gridblog“. This is a fast loading theme (only 36Kb in size) that has very little design elements but compensates with its functionality. It lets you display your front page blog entries uniquely by dividing them into two columns. The theme has different layout for pages, single entries and the archives section. Gridblog is fully CSS & XHTML compliant and has been tested with both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Gridblog

Test Run | Download

Please leave comments and let me know if you like it!

83 replies on “WordPress Theme – Gridblog”

Srikanth Reply

Jai,

I’m early adopter of some of your themes since 2006 and this one just hit the nail on its head. minimal, loads each post in the same page without a major refresh and is so elegant without too many confusing options.

you can consider making font size slightly bigger (like in the twenty ten theme).
Good work Jai. I think you must focus on minimal themes like this which place greater emphasis on content than actual design. Well done.

Srikanth Reply

i need to know where i can configure what goes up and what goes in the footer on this theme? please can you let us know?

James Reply

Hey Jai! ABSOLUTELY SUPER WORK!
I dig this theme so much I just can’t put it into words. In fact, I want to use it for our church website it that is cool. I have just one small question. They want to have a banner type thing and so I wonder if a post’s image can show up in the main page post spot – having two posts in the area is perfect, each with a 450×275 image. But the theme being minimalistic wont show the images. Any work around this?
Thanks!
James

mekradendi Reply

How about a dark blue? (but not too dark).

What colors beside blue go well with yellow? As a designer i’m sure you would know.

Lavrai Reply

Hello! Wonderful theme… I don’t see any instructions anywhere included with the download. How do I override the sidebar layout you have in the theme so I can set the widgets to my own liking/choosing? Thanks very much in advance.

Anne Reply

I’ll have to revise my last comment!! The theme is blank in the themes menu but loads normally and is totally functional!! thank you for a great layout.

Cathy Reply

Hi there,
This theme has an awesome layout – color scheme. Functionality is cool. And the layout is DIFFerent – which is key, imo.

My only complaint is that it is all laid out with SPAN tags… I looked through the css to see if I could edit it to suit my site, and oh. my. word. I can’t figure it out! Will google like css that is like this – without the heading tags, etc??

Thanks so much for the free themes!! Awesome!

bulent Reply

two post column on the main page is very useful…
it is good for the visitor to see more posts without scrolling down (by removing the top content)…

Erik Dasque Reply

Why are you using thecontent_rss in the main index.php ?

(By the way, what plugin do you use for comments that allow for a reply and a link to the replied to comment ? And a notify ?)

Mike Reply

Thanks great theme, nice and clean loads super fast. Does anyone know how to split the main index section into 3 or 4 columns instead of 2? I assume it’s in index .php here :
php if($count % 2 == 0) echo ”; else echo ”

fejker Reply

I’m having problems with pictures and text. I have a lot of thumbs in my posts and when I make a new paragraph or just line brake it simply doesn’t obey it. The text goes right of the picture when it should go below the picture. I’m not talking about captions (although that is another problem), I’m talking about a normal thumbnail with text continuing below the thumbnail.

[][][][][][][][][][][][]
Text text text text text text

Like the example above, where the brackets are thumbs.

The problem with captions is that on the first page it leaves out the img src tags but leaves the caption tags and it looks ugly as … when you have a lot of pics with captions in a post or even just one pic.

It’s a great theme and I’m working on customizing it a bit to my needs … it just needs some polishing.

Thanks.

marti garaughty Reply

Hi Jai, gorgeous layout, love the clean minimalism of the design. Awesome possibilities for customization. excellent work!

Telecharger dvdrip Reply

Hello! Wonderful theme… I don’t see any instructions anywhere included with the download. How do I override the sidebar layout you have in the theme so I can set the widgets to my own liking/choosing? Thanks very much in advance.

Ashish -WebTraffic Guide Reply

I am fan of minimal and fast loading themes – this looks nice with its grid arrangement. Is it possible to change the font at a central place? (Say Arial throughtout?) Thanks and Cheers!!

Vaibhav Reply

Yup, just noticed, not title either… Here’s how to fix that for all those who are looking to fix it…

Open header.php, and find
WordPress Theme - Gridblog

and replace by something like this:
<?php if ( is_single() ) { wp_title(' - ',true,'right'); }?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?>

Jai Reply

@Lildisnie : No, it cannot move the sidebars to the top because the sidebars are in the bottomcontent.php. You must have done some changes yourself before. So, I suggest you install the vanilla gridblog before doing any changes.

Lildisnie Reply

What that does is moves the sidebars to the top along with the bottom content.

I want the posts which is hanlded by page.php to be first and then the topcontent.php and then the bottom content.php.

???

Lildisnie Reply

I really like it . .

Have a dbt about how I can make the topcontent.php as the content above the sibebars.

As in the posts should be on the top and the topcontent should be in the middle..

help!!!

Vaibhav Reply

Ahh.. no code allowed in my comment… well… in Sidebar1.php, there is an if statement which says

dynamic_sidebar(2)

Make it,

dynamic_sidebar(1)

Thats all… once again, great theme… i am busy modding it 🙂

Vaibhav Reply

Nice Theme. I am using it at one of my blogs. I found a small bug though. If you add Widgets to Sidebar1, it doesn’t work. The problem is in Sidebar1.php

Change the following line:

To:

Cheers.

Jai Reply

@365hope.com : Its not about the design. Its about dividing the blog posts in two columns and also to demonstrate the power of CSS Grid frameworks. They are lovely 🙂

365hope.com Reply

Speaking frankly, this theme is just so so, no better than the last theme your did.
Jai, bring out your great imagination!

rajeelkp Reply

Hi ,
I just created a blog on blogger
And i sawed good templates of wordpress

Can i get it for my blogger ?

What should i do to get it on my blog

Cindy Reply

wow……x-(
another good themes launched by wordpress. it’s a little more easier. and grate feature.. i like this themes because it is fast loading themes…….

MICK Reply

Hi …. Iam a Indonesian blogger.

I just say …. very nice blog Bob 😀

This theme like Black n White themes. I Love it. I hope you make a cool themes again.

Happy blogging 😀

Filô Reply

Hi Jai, congratulations. The theme is really awesome. I am having some trouble inserting images into posts. They look strange… (sorry about my english!) But anyway, I like it very much. Thanks!
Besos,
F.

Chelle Reply

I am a huge minamalist blog design fan – I completely stripped down bobv2 and am loving it though I really like this one also!

Jai Reply

@Edwin : What exactly do you want to do with the header? You can read the style.css and header.php files for a better understanding.

Edwin Reply

Hello Jai,
Love the functionality, i’ve been 10 days around the net looking for this kind of great functionality. The only Iam questioning is the possibility of change the header, is it changeable with jeopardizing the whole code.

Thanks for the great work. I’ve downloaded it but waiting for your reply to install it.

All the best.

SuperMario290 Reply

I like that it’s kind of like a sandbox theme, where you could make it into anything with a little work, but I think that you should add some images and more color to just make it a little more easier. Great Job! 😀

Ken Reidy Reply

FYI, Thad Allender already using Blueprint CSS from several months ago…. So you’re not the first theme designer

Talk Binary Reply

Great theme! I can assure you, working with CSS to make those floats, would help any blogger! Thanks for providing this great theme!

Hussein Reply

Wow. another great theme from you Jai. I’m sure amny blogger will use it. a minimalistic theme is a trend now because it is fast-loading 😀

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